The concept that the wearing of a surgical gown and surgical gloves will protect a healthcare provider's torso and upper extremities from contamination by blood and body fluids is generally accepted. However, one of the problems encountered by healthcare providers in a surgical setting is that this protective barrier may become breached during interaction of the health care professional with the patient. With the rapid increase of cases of highly infectious diseases, such as AIDS and hepatitis, the medical field has become increasing concerned not only with protecting the patients, but with protecting the healthcare provider from patients' infectious diseases. This is especially true in emergency situations either in the emergency room of a hospital or at the site of an accident where it unknown if a patient is carrying the HIV virus or some other infectious disease. In such a situation a gown or garment is required which can adequately protect the health care provider.
That harm to a healthcare provider may result from breach of the protective gown or glove has been known for many years. To avoid such a breach, there has been a host of materials employed for both gowns and gloves to improve the quality and to support their validity. Indeed, public standards for the quality of these barriers have been proposed by the American Society of Testing Materials (ASTM). For surgical gowns these Standards are so strict that they preclude the transfer of liquids and even viral particles, which could pass through a pinhole under pressure of 2 PSI. For surgical gloves, ASTM Standard D 5151 permits an Acceptable Quality level for holes of 2 1/2% with a hole defined as a "defect permitting the passage of water with the glove pressured by 1000 ml of water."
However, despite the large amount of attention paid to the development of materials used in these barriers, little, if any, attention has been paid to their design, particularly, the junction or interface between the sleeve of the gown and the glove. It is at this interface that body fluids, which may contain harmful or infectious diseases, breech the protective barrier worn by the healthcare provider.
Hospital-type gowns proposed heretofore usually are provided with sleeves each terminating in a cuff at the outer end which is usually in the form of a stretchable cuff made of stockinette material. Ordinarily, the stretchable stockinette cuff of gowns do not have optimum hydrophobic properties. At the gown-glove interface, not only can an aqueous liquid flow freely between the glove and gown, but distribution of such penetrating body fluids is encouraged by the absorbent stockinette cuff. Although glove manufacturers have provided glove cuffs which do not easily roll down to expose this area of the gown, the interface between the gown and the glove remains extremely vulnerable to fluids.
Thus, present hospital-type gowns when worn with gloves provide for a gown-glove interface that fails to fully protect the wearer from potentially hazardous blood and other bodily fluids. It would therefore be advantageous to be able to create a liquid impervious barrier at the gown-glove interface to enable healthcare providers to be adequately protected from potentially harmful bodily fluids from patients. Additionally, it would be beneficial if such a liquid impervious barrier at the gown-glove interface could be created by utilizing the standard gowns and gloves currently used by health care workers. The present invention provides for these benefits.